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U.S. Health Care Costs More Than ‘Socialized’ European Medicine

Alex Brandon/Associated PressPeople lined up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to await its judgment on health care reform.

LONDON — A sobering statistic emerged on Thursday as the United States Supreme Court prepared to deliver its judgment on Obamacare.

It confirmed that the U.S. spends more per capita on publicly funded health care than almost every other country in the developed world. And that includes countries that provide free health care to all their citizens.

Figures published on Thursday by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a 34-nation grouping of advanced economies, showed that less than half of health spending in the U.S. was publicly financed compared with an O.E.C.D. average of 72.2 percent.

“However, the overall level of health spending in the United States is so high that public (i.e. government) spending on health per capita is still greater than in all other O.E.C.D. countries, except Norway and the Netherlands,” according to the Paris-based organization’s Health Data 2012 report.

Combined public and private spending on health care in the U.S. came to $8,233 per person in 2010, more than twice as much as relatively rich European countries such as France, Sweden and Britain that provide universal health care.

Are Americans healthier as a result? The U.S. has fewer doctors per capita than comparable countries, and fewer hospital beds. But more is spent on advanced diagnostic equipment and health tests.

Life expectancy has risen in line with that in other developed countries, but the average American life span of 78.7 years in 2010 was below the O.E.C.D. average. Obesity in the U.S. was the highest in the 34-nation survey.

“Obesity’s growing prevalence foreshadows increases in the occurrence of health problems (such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases), and higher health care costs in the future,” the O.E.C.D. said.

An earlier survey found that U.S. health care was overpriced and not always better than in comparable countries. “Sometimes treatments are provided which are unnecessary, or even undesirable,” the organization said in a 2011 report on comparative health indicators.

“It does a lot of elective surgery,” the survey said of the U.S. health care system, “the sort of activities where it is not always clear-cut about whether a particular intervention is necessary or not.”

Advocates of state-funded universal health care might use such statistics to show free health care for all is not only fairer but also cheaper.

In defense of a Canadian health care system maligned during the Obamacare debate as “an inefficient socialistic enterprise,” Tim Shufelt of Canada’s Financial Post wrote: “Canadians pay much less per capita on health care than do Americans, while ranking higher among the most common measures of human health.”

Canada’s embrace of universal health care reflects sentiment in most countries where free treatment is regarded as a right.

“In Europe…the right of access to health care for all is considered normal,” Pierre-Yves Dugua wrote in a Figaro blog, “as is a financing system based on compulsory contributions.”

The economic arguments in favor of European-style systems have been evident in the domestic U.S. debate on Obamacare.

Commenting on the latest O.E.C.D. figures, an editorial in Gannett’s The Advertiser noted: “America pays big-time money for health care and gets Third World results.”

“The greatest public good comes from universal access to care that emphasizes prevention and health education,” according to article. “The European systems, often socialized or with health insurers forced to offer basic plans to everyone, can do that. Ours doesn’t.”